Page:Beauty for Ashes.djvu/89

 "I have conversed with angels concerning infants in heaven, and inquired whether they are pure from evils, because they have no actual evil, like adults; but I was told that they are in evil like them, and are also nothing but evil; that they, like all angels, are withheld from evil and held in good by the Lord; and that hence it appears to them as if they were in good of themselves. Lest, therefore, infants who have grown up in heaven should entertain a false opinion of themselves, and imagine that the good which they possess is from themselves, and not from the Lord, they are sometimes let into the evils which they received hereditarily, and are left in them until they know, acknowledge, and believe, that their good is from the Lord. A prince, who died in his infancy and grew up in heaven, entertained the false opinion just mentioned. He was consequently let into the life of the evils in which he was born, and then I perceived from the sphere of his life that he had a disposition to domineer over others, and to make light of adulteries. These evils he had derived from his parents. After he had acknowledged his evil nature, he was received again among the angels with whom he was before associated. No one in the other life ever suffers punishment on account of hereditary evil, because it is not his own, and is therefore no fault of his; but he is punished on account of the actual evil which is his own, and thus in proportion as he has made hereditary evil his own by actual life. Infants are let into a state of their hereditary evil when they become adult, not that they may suffer punishment for it, but in order that they may learn, that of themselves they are nothing but evil; that by the mercy of the Lord they are withdrawn from the hell which cleaves to them, and introduced into heaven; that they are in heaven not by any merit of their own, but from the Lord; and that thus they may not boast of their goodness before others, since